Date: Wed Nov 26 06:32:49 2014
Chickens come home to roost. State building and the credibility conundrum in
Somalia
By Anna Bruzzone
Posted on
<http://africanarguments.org/2014/11/26/chickens-come-home-to-roost-state-bu
ilding-and-the-credibility-conundrum-in-somalia-by-anna-bruzzone/> November
26, 2014
Yet another international donor conference on Somalia. “A history of broken
promises” might have been a rather more appropriate title for the
Ministerial High Level Partnership Forum (HLPF) which was held in Copenhagen
on 19 and 20 November. The conference was intended to review progress
against Somalia’s New Deal Compact endorsed in Brussels in September 2013
and chart the way ahead to the implementation of Vision 2016.
This “blueprint for action” entails three main threads, the “democratic
formation” of regional interim administrations and Federal States, the
revision and adoption of the Constitution and the holding of national
elections in 2016. The goals are ambitious, but they seem to be contained
within a floating bubble. Blown by the international community, the bubble
is growing and may eventually burst.
The HLPF meeting in Copenhagen was supposed to build upon the “current
momentum” on Somalia, both nationally and internationally. That sense of
“momentum”, however, which had made southern Somalia breath more easily for
some months after September 2012, is gone.
The federal government’s performance has become a concern for both Somalis
and the international community, though on different grounds. The British
government’s enthusiasm has faded, since it turned out that Somalia was not
going to be the political victory that Prime Minister David Cameron was
looking for after the intervention in Libya in 2011.
<http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/nov/18/uk-somalia-corrup
tion-arms-deals> Questions are being raised in Westminster about Britain’s
relationship with Somalia, in the wake of the latest report by the UN
Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea alleging corruption and activities
that may be subverting the arms embargo.
The United States did not send a delegation to the High Level Partnership
Forum in Copenhagen, expressing their “deep concern with political turmoil
in Somalia”. The current turmoil, however, seems to be the result of
problems which are inherent in the transition process and may further
escalate in the lead up to the 2016 deadline.
Hailed as the yardstick for the implementation of the New Deal,
post-transition Somalia has become a victim of its own “momentum” with
donors. The implementation of Vision 2016 has become a matter of
international reputation. Western donors are impatient with the slow pace of
state building and urging the Somali government to “deliver”. The latter,
whose credibility and popularity is falling among the Somalis, is
increasingly dependent on shrinking external support.
Partly as a result of the pressure to meet external requirements and
deadlines, tensions within Somalia’s political elite have been deepening.
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and Prime Minister Abdiweli Sheikh Ahmed
have been at loggerheads for weeks, in what seems to be the latest episode
of a serial political drama. The current standoff shows once more the
volatility of clan-based governments led by a President and a Prime Minister
who have overlapping, conflicting prerogatives, thanks to a faulty
Constitution.
This stalemate also reveals an underlying conflict over who is going to take
credit for Vision 2016. It seems that Somali politicians are already
fighting over the elections’ preparation, no matter how unrealistic the
prospect of holding credible elections in 2016 might be.
A cornerstone of both Somalia’s Transition Roadmap and Vision 2016,
federalism has been playing a major role in fostering Somalia’s political
fragmentation. Bringing clan conflict back to the fore, the federalisation
process has reignited the debate over autochthony, which pervaded fifteen
years of civil war and was only partially appeased by the reassertion of
Islamic identities. Moreover, to respond to Villa Somalia’s reluctance
towards the implementation of federalism, donors have chosen to support any
regional entity going in the “right direction” and able to play with the
stability argument. Promoted as a policy to foster “local agency” and mark
the paradigm shift from liberal peace to stabilisation, federalism has in
fact increased Somalia’s vulnerability to regional and international
interference, producing further destabilisation.
Federalism is a crucial and controversial issue as it calls the meaning of
citizenship into question. This notwithstanding, the donor-driven approach
to the implementation of federalism has consisted of a series of ad hoc,
partial deals of questionable legitimacy, the Somali public being excluded
from decision making.
In the latest episode of the federalism series (farce?), the former
Parliament Speaker, Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden, was elected as the President
of the South West Administration in Baydhabo, on 17 November 2014, two days
ahead of the High Level Partnership Forum in Copenhagen. The election’s
results were first dismissed by the current Speaker, Mohamed Osman Jawari,
then welcomed by Interior Minister Abdullahi Godah Barre and President
Hassan Sheikh Mohamud – although he had previously refused to endorse the
South West Administration conference – and finally celebrated by the
international community (IGAD, EU, and AMISOM).
Though absent from the conference in Copenhagen, the United States welcomed
the “historic election” of Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden. The election was so
“historic” that, in less than twenty-four hours, it was contested by a group
of MPs, rejected by a Somali politician who claimed to be the bona-fide
president of the South West Administration, and mired in accusations of
Ethiopian meddling.
There is an uneasy feeling of déjà vu hovering in the air. With a view to
meeting the 2016 deadline, donors have been endorsing friendlies against
those opposing certain policies funded by the international community. The
competition among Somali politicians for accessing power and capturing
financial benefits has been escalating. The New Deal seems, in fact, to be
perpetuating some old dynamics, which have contributed to transform Somalia
into what Alex de Waal termed a “
<http://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2013/10/24/somalia-the-logic-of-a-r
entier-political-marketplace/> rentier political market place”.
What is at stake here is the credibility of the whole state-building
process, which continues to be seen by the Somali public as over-influenced
and “contaminated” by foreigners. On the one hand, the “Somali project”
supported by Western donors has increasingly been perceived as a
never-ending enterprise, with a poor accountability record. On the other
hand, al-Shabaab, which still controls large rural areas and retains the
ability to carry out attacks in several parts of the country (and beyond
Somalia), has been invoking national sentiments and capitalising on the
West’s lack of credibility.
Against this discouraging background, one can only hope that the Somali
people, often celebrated for their resilience, will follow the exhortation
contained in a popular song by a band of Somali singers called Qaylodhaan
(“to sound the tocsin”): “Don’t tire out until you get your rights”.
Anna Bruzzone is a PhD candidate at the University of Warwick.
<http://africanarguments.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/somalia2.jpg>
somalia2
Somali president Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud speaks at the High Level Partnership
Forum held in Copenhagen last week.
(image/jpeg attachment: image001.jpg)